During that month he showed himself without pity, and it is related, with a shudder of horror, that several times he had the throats of a great number of captives cut,—a frightful and bloody holocaust which he offered, doubtless, on some painful and dreaded anniversary. The month of December passed, his mind, obscured by a bloodthirsty madness, became more calm, when, returning to Tripoli, and shutting himself up in his solitude, he remained sometimes two or three months without putting to sea. Then, his desperate soul again possessed by some bitter resentment, he equipped his galley anew, and recommenced his atrocious career.
Among the French captives whom he had taken in his first expedition with Kemal-Reis, and whom he had generously abandoned to this corsair, upon the sole condition that liberty should never be restored to them, was one whom he retained,—a child of four or five years carried away from the coast of Languedoc, with an old woman who died during the passage. This child of unparagoned beauty was Erebus.
Pog named him thus, as if he wished by the fatal name to predestinate the unfortunate child to the career to which his evil designs devoted him.
In the intensity of his hatred of the human race, Pog had the infernal desire to destroy the soul of this unfortunate child, by giving him the most pernicious education. He devoted himself to this task with abominable perseverance. As Erebus advanced in years, Pog, without reason for his absurd eccentricities, alternately expended upon the boy a furious aversion and cruelty, and impulsive demonstrations of solicitude,—these last being the only sentiments af kindness he had felt for many years. By degrees, these spasmodic expressions of sympathy discontinued, and Pog soon included Erebus in the common execration with which he pursued mankind, and adhered to his fatal resolution with deadly persistence. Far from leaving the boy’s mind uneducated, he took particular pains in developing it. Among the numerous slaves which his avocation of rapine brought in his way, Pog-Reis easily found professors and teachers of all sorts, and what he failed to find he purchased from other corsairs or obtained by other means.
For instance, having learned that a celebrated Spanish painter, named Juan Pelieko, lived in Barcelona, he employed every stratagem to draw him out of the city, and at last succeeded in capturing him and taking him to Tripoli. When this artist had perfected Erebus in his art, Pog had him put in chains, in which servitude he remained until he died.
In his impious and cruel course of experiment, Pog, desiring to force his victim through every degree in the scale of iniquity, from vice to crime, took pleasure in making the child acquainted with all kinds of sin, and in giving him opportunities for culture and accomplishments. He argued that with ordinary intelligence a man was only an ordinary villain, but that various resources enabled him to achieve the most wonderful results in audacious wickedness. Through this abominable system, the arts, instead of elevating the soul of Erebus, were designed to develop a passion for sensual pleasures, and to materialise an otherwise exalted nature.
When the wonders of painting and music do not lift the soul into the infinite realm of the ideal, when one seeks only a melody more or less agreeable to the ear, or a form more or less attractive to the eye, then the arts deprave rather than ennoble mankind.
Surely, Pog must have had a terrible vengeance to wreak upon humanity, his misanthropy must have partaken of the nature of madness, that he could have been guilty of the sacrilegious cruelty of thus degrading a pure young soul!
No scruple or regret made him hesitate. As a tender father would seek to guard his child’s mind from dangerous thoughts, and to encourage in his young heart all noble and generous instincts, Pog, on the other hand, left no means untried to corrupt this unhappy child, and to excite his bad passions.
It is with certain moral organisations as with physical natures,—they can be injured and enfeebled, but not completely ruined, so healthy and vigorous is their vital germ. Thus it was with Erebus. By a special providence, the pernicious teachings of Pog had not yet, so to speak, essentially altered the heart of the poor boy.